Free Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 08 by Martians in Maggody Page A

Estelle and stepped over the tape.
    "Please don't come any further!" snapped a young blond man. "We must protect the sanctity of the site."
    "The scene of the crime, so to speak?" I said as I let him have a clear view of my badge. "It seems to me that'd be my job. I'm Chief of Police Arly Hanks."
    "I'm Brian Quint. The gentleman over there is Arthur Sageman, director of the ETH Research Foundation in California. Dr. Sageman is the world's foremost authority on extraterrestrial encounters."
    I spotted a silver-haired man on his knees near the edge of the water, measuring something with a ruler. His mouth was pursed with concentration, and his eyebrows were racing back and forth like copulating caterpillars. "Is that so?" I drawled. "How convenient that he happened to be in town in time for our very first visitor from outer space."
    "We came yesterday because of the crop circle configurations. Dr. Sageman is convinced they're the result of alien interaction."
    "Aliens are interacting with Maggody, Arkansas?" I said as I searched Brian Quint's eyes for that tattletale glint. His skin was very light and unblemished, his hair so blond it was almost white, his features indistinct. His pale blue eyes seemed innocent enough, but I wasn't ready to make a judgment concerning his lucidity or lack thereof. If nothing else, he was from California. That automatically made him suspect.
    Before he could respond, a man with a much more pronounced glint joined us. "I'm Dr. Hayden McMasterson, the director of the Foundation for ITH Research in Taos. I too came to investigate the crop circle configurations. Rest assured that they are not caused by any visitors from outer space, Chief Hanks. The idea is preposterous. Self-proclaimed authorities like Arthur Sageman are so enamored of their pet theories that they are blind to simple physical evidence."
    "Good morning, Hayden," Brian said with a sigh.
    I blinked at McMasterson. "Exactly what physical evidence are we talking about?"
    "Brian!" shouted Sageman. "Mix the plaster so that we can make a cast. This is an excellent footprint, by far the most highly defined."
    McMasterson rumbled angrily. "See what I mean? He finds a footprint and assumes it's of extraterrestrial origin. He sees a flattened expanse and a charred circle and starts hypothesizing about the dimensions of the spacecraft. Last night he observed a light in the sky and announced it to be the departure of said craft. It was nothing more than an airplane, naturally. Arthur is overly enamored of his quaint little findings, as well as secretive. Had he shared the name of his witness when he reinvestigated the Roswell incident, I could have told him she was a nut. Arthur has even lied in order to conceal evidence from his fellow investigators."
    I wondered if I'd been wrong about the glint, even though he had a ponytail and was wearing a turtleneck sweater and a gold earring in his left ear. "When I heard about all this, " I said, "I presumed there'd be some logical explanations. My only witness is on the excitable side, and her credibility's not worth a plug nickel."
    "Let me give you my card," he said with a warm smile, stopping short of patting me on the head but coming dangerously close to it. I do not care to be mistaken for a sheepdog. "I can see you're a sensible young woman. The others are prone to hysteria, and the level of suggestibility last night was higher than the maligned airplane. It's encouraging to know that we won't be having any premature statements from the authorities."
    I tucked his card in my back pocket and went over to the edge of the creek, where a huddle had formed. Brian was stirring a batch of plaster in a plastic pail. Two women were hovering nearby. One gave me a frown; the other waggled her fingers and giggled. I surmised they were the women from Little Rock.
    "It's eighteen and one-half inches in length," Sageman intoned as if he were measuring the Ark of the Covenant, "and almost five inches at the widest